This Wednesday my Dad drove us both to Houston for the day for a follow up appointment at MD Anderson. As expected, MDA still didn’t have my CT scan or PET scan from last year, even though they’d had almost two weeks to obtain them. Luckily, I had brought my own copies of the disks for them to import into their system. Twenty minutes later, we were looking at the scans and comparing late December to mid February.
Good News
The mass in my abdomen, basically lymph nodes, blood vessels, and connective tissue, has reduced in size by about 4.5cm. This is good progress. This also means the treatment appears to be working. Bloodwork taken over the last two months tells a similar story, at least as far as these two markers are concerned.
CEA – A carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) test is a blood test used to help diagnose and manage certain types of cancers. The CEA test is used especially for cancers of the large intestine and rectum.
Carbohydrate antigen (CA) 19-9 – A type of antigen released by pancreatic cancer cells. It can also be referred to as a tumor marker.
CEA / CA 19-9
- Dec 23 – 12.93 ng/mL / 4583.9 U/mL
- Jan 14 – 32.61 ng/mL / 12111.5 U/mL
- Jan 28 – 23.8 ng/mL / 25552.7 U/mL
- Feb 11 – 10.54 ng/mL / 8523.4 U/mL
MDA also recommended Avastin, which inhibits what tumors need to grow their blood flow. The one big risk they brought up is the potential for bowel perforations, meaning my bowels could just open up a hole in themselves, like appendicitis, but worse. If you follow that link above and check out the other potential side effects, they are numerous. I’m undecided if that’s something I actually want to take.
Bad News?
MDA doesn’t have anything else to recommend for me at this time. No immunotherapy or trials or other treatments overlooked. FOLFIRINOX is as good as it gets, at least for North American standard of care. I don’t know how I should feel about this.
At least the disease is responding. For now.
Really Most Sincerely 